As previously presented, I am advancing my little game to it’s next development phase: preview!

This phase will focus less on technical stuff. Even though I quite like low-level plumbing, I’ll avoid that kind of stuff as much as possible. Instead, things will shift more towards actual game development: Flesh things out, remove unnecessary things. In short: Make sure there is an actual game.

Adding an introduction

This release features the first little bit of an introduction. The game has a few concepts that aren’t necessarily self-explanatory, but are crucial to play it. Many games will include some sort of help screen or tutorial. I’d like the players to learn how to play by playing the game, so I’ll be including a few short introduction stages.

These stages work by disabling most of your ship’s functions. They re-active one feature at a time, let you play with them a little bit and finish a short challenge. The first ones are already present: Basic movement, shooting and dashing. More will come. This will also tie into a (very) basic story later on.

Revising controls

In my last post, I mentioned I’m thinking about changing the control scheme.

The game actually has 3 control schemes: Digital (gamepad or keyboard), Analog (analog sticks like PSX) and Mouse. Mouse and Analog feel mostly fine to me. They’re sort of absoloute controls: Your ship turns where your mouse cursor / analog stick is pointing.

Digital controls do the exact same thing. However, this is a bit too inaccurate, as there are only 8 directions for you to choose from. I originally planned for players to simply shoot while turning, but this turned out to be very tedious.

So, we’re going back to the basics: Digital controls are now tank controls, just like the original Asteroid. What this means is that the direction you press is no longer absolute. Instead, left/right now slightly turn your ship in the corresponding direction.

Try it out! What to you think?